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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview H-0123-1, in
the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical
Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill”
Roy Ham grew up in Ashe County, North Carolina. He recalls wading through heavy snowfalls, milk bucket in hand, to attend school. He left shortly before high school graduation to contribute to the war effort on the home front, but eventually returned to earn a high school diploma before entering the working world. What Ham did for a living most of his life is not entirely clear, although he has spent a lot of time making stringed instruments and plenty of time having fun. This interview is less useful for gleaning information about the industrializing South than it is for illustrating a life rich in storytelling and song. Ham shares anecdote about ghosts, sleeping in a ditch after an evening at the movies, mistaking groundhogs for polecats, telling lies, and doing on-stage back flips at a concert. Listen as well for some music.
Roy Ham tells stories and sings his way through an interview that reveals more about Ham the character than it does about the industrializing South.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Start with your family. Were your family originally from Ashe County?
I was born in 1925 in Ashe County. My daddy had always been a resident of Ashe County. My mother was from Allegheny County. I was born in 1925 in Helton Township, and that's where I made my life until I left Ashe County.
How old were you then?
I left in '47; I must have been twenty-two.
You're a little bit older than my mother, then. She left about the same time, but she was only eighteen, I guess, when she left.
My Grandfather Ham always lived with us until the ripe old age of ninety-one.
Boy, he lived a long time.
And he'd never been sick, and I never heard him say a cuss word of any kind.
Had the Ham's always lived in Ashe County as far back as you can remember?
As far back as I could remember. I reckon my great-grandfather Ham lived over on Piney; part of it's in Ashe County, and part of it's in Alleghany County. I believe that's right. And my mother's people were more in Alleghany and Wilkes. She was a Church from Alleghany County. And I lived there until I left in 1947. And we moved one time that I remember, from the old house into a new house, and it was just across the road.
Is this where your mother's living now?
That's where my mother's living right now.
Is your second house?
Yes. That's the only time that we ever moved, is from the old house that was across the road into the new one. There were seven of us in the family. That included five children, Dad and Mother. I guess Grandpa made eight in the family.
Were the other kids older than you?
I have one brother that's older than I am. Three brothers and one sister.
Was your family real close?
Yes, very definitely. We didn't have no money, no nothing, but we were a real happy, and we were all close together, and we're still close together. We are all living except my father passed away nine years ago. And we all tried to watch out after each other instead of quarrelling like a good many families do?
Yes.
We were real close.
Did you remember any fights or anything
We had very few of those. We had to play together, and we didn't have any fistfights. We'd get mad and fuss at each other a little bit. And when I was five years old I started to grade school down at Helton two miles from home. We had to walk every day. And sometimes when winter would set in along about October, we'd have snow the biggest part of the time until April the following summer.
Gosh.
And most of the time we'd wade snow, a lot of times up to our knees,
Bet it don't snow like that anymore.
No, it don't even snow up there. The winters have changed in that part of the country. And we always had to take a biscuit with something in it for lunch. And the wintertime, sometimes the children at that school would take milk and bread to school in a bucket and hang it out the window in the winter and keep it cool. Sometimes we'd wrap up an onion and stick it in our pocket to flavor the milk and bread. That was pretty good eating.
You liked that?
Yes, ma'am. We didn't have any lunchrooms, period, when we went to school.
And I went to that school until I finished the seventh grade, and then I had to graduate from there and go to Lansing to high school. That was a high school until they consolidated several schools there back in the thirties to make the high school in Lansing. Helton was a high school to start with. And I didn't like Lansing School too awfully well.
That was further from home than Helton was, wasn't it?
Yes. Some of the things that we done down at Helton, I guess people would
frown on it now. We had a well. We didn't have running water like we've
got now. All the toilets were outside, and we had one well for all of us
to drink from. It had a pump handle on it. And one day this boy who was
in a grade younger than I was, but we had to walk two miles every day
together, and one day he'd been playing pretty hard at lunch. And this
new stuff that they'd started putting in wells, chlorine,
And we all cried a little bit; we thought it was poisoned. And one day he was out sailing ships out in Helton Creek, and this same young fellow stumbled and fell and got wet all over, and he had to stay at school wet all day, the rest of the evening, before he could walk the two miles home to get dry clothes, he had to stay at school in wet clothes.
Poor kid. He just had it all on him, didn't he?
Yes, he did. It was nothing unusual to see a family, maybe two or three children, eating out of the same bucket of milk and bread. And you'd take a turn about with your spoon—each one had a different spoon—but if one person would get out of line and try to get a bite extra, the others would whack him with the spoon handle.
When I got old enough to get a job, I quit school and went to the hospital to work.
Is this when it was still new?
Still new. I worked for eighty-four hours a week for twenty dollars a month.
That's a lot, for hardly anything.
That way I was making five cents an hour. One nickel an hour.
What kind of stuff did they have you doing?
Cleaning up the hospital, and orderly. At that time that was just about everything except giving shots.
Then you'd have to be a nurse or a doctor or something.
Well, I'd do most anything a nurse could except give shots.
How old were you when you took that job?
I was eighteen.
So did you finish high school? Not quite?
Not at that time. I finished high school, but I stayed there six months or something, and then I went to Norfolk, Virginia, to work in the shipyard. And I was awfully homesick. I was used to this pure mountain water, and then went to Norfolk in the swamps. You know, that's the Dismal Swamp? And the water tastes rotten. You'd take a bath, and the water would run down across your lip and you could taste it, and it was terrible after being used to the mountain water. And I was awfully homesick, but the War was going on. Another thing that made me sick, I thought people ought to work like us hillbillies to try to make a living, and they weren't. They'd come in the shipyard and just lay down; they didn't care whether they got any work done or not. That went on. And on several occasions I was called on not to try to work and get all the work done, so I'd have enough to do the rest of the day.
Was this by your fellow workers or your boss?
It was the supervisor. And one of the biggest experiences that I had there was, they brought a ship in that had been sunk in Pearl Harbor, the ship "The Honolulu." It was a cruiser. I believe your daddy told me he saw that ship sunk.
Yes, he was over there.
He was in Pearl Harbor when it was sunk. The first day that they turned it over to the workers to go aboard, I went aboard to help fix that ship, to put it back in the water. Well, we had done all the work that we were permitted to do on this particular day, and the gentleman that I was working with was a pipe fitter, or plumber as you'd call it in real life, and I was his helper. I was close to nineteen. And we'd crawl back in the ballast tanks and went to sleep.
And all at once Sladen commenced to kicking and hollering and screaming.
He said, "Roy, did you punch me?" I told him no. And he said, "Well, get
out of here," so he run across the top of me. Now in the ballast tank
there's only room for one person to lay; two people can't lay side by
side on the deck of one of those. So he'd went in first, and he'd
crawled back in the corner and went to sleep, and I had to go to sleep
right in under this hole where you get in the ballast tank. Now I'm
ashamed at having to sleep with the War going on, but we had nothing
else to do, and tired and weary, so we had went to sleep when he woke up
screaming. And I thought he'd had a bad dream. And when we got back out
on the deck where there was lights—see, there was no light at all in
there—it was probably five or ten minutes before he could talk, he was
scared that bad. And when he got so he could talk, he
And walked out through the wall.
And I laughed at him, because I had seen plenty of people scared wake up from a nightmare. But three to four, maybe five months later, he hunted me up one day. He and I had parted company and were working on different shifts, so he hunted me up one day and dropped me a letter from the Defense Department. It came from Washington. And on that letter from the Defense Department, that sailor, that number, the Defense Department described the tattoo on that sailor just exactly the way that this man described it to me on the day that he was scared so bad, was killed in Pearl Harbor aboard "The Honolulu."
That was scary. What did that do to him?
He believed it, and there's no way in this world that you could
Gosh. Why wouldn't they let you work as much as you wanted to?
Get too much work done.
And they didn't want that to …
Apparently. I still can't understand it.
It's not reasonable, but yet it happened. And they'd keep me there
sometimes fourteen hours a day, and do two hours' work. Everything that
I could have done could have been done in two to three hours, the way I
was used to working in the mountains. By the time the War was over, I
was pretty well sick of that type of work, so two or three days after
the Japanese had surrendered I quit and came home. School had been going
on a few weeks in Lansing, and I told you I'd quit school. So I had a
younger brother that was going to high school at that time, and he was
bragging about what a good teacher they had at Lansing named Ron Davis.
He believed in making a child mind, and if he told you to move he meant
for you to move. Just a great, great teacher. He wasn't unreasonable; he
was just a good teacher. And I shook hands with him when my brother
introduced him and told him if he had been the principal when I went to
school that I would probably have finished before I left. And he said,
"Well, you can finish anyway. Come on back next week."
And I just joked with her. I was visiting the school. I was going out to hunt me a job and was visiting the school. Well, it wasn't ten minutes till she come with my books, and I would be in her homeroom. And that incident caused me to finish high school. I went that year, passed my grades, and then went the next year and finished. And that was in '47. I graduated from Lansing High School in 1947. The reason that I left Ashe County, there was no jobs, no nothing. By the time you'd get your tobacco raised or whatever, the government would come and cut it down and you couldn't sell it; you couldn't get enough money out of it to last you.
So the government came in and stopped you from growing so much?
Oh, yes, they allowed my dad and mama one-tenth of one acre of tobacco.
That's just terrible.
That's not much tobacco. So that year, '47, I put out five acres of
beans, and I worked hard on them. That was the only thing I had to do. I
wasn't married. And hoeing, fertilized, following the team of horses
over five acres of ground, planting the beans, getting the beans in the
ground, getting them up, hoeing them, and then it come the great day
when I'd make some money off them. They had growed good; they had a good
season that year. And when it come the
My mother was telling me she did that.
I borrowed the money to pay that. I paid them as they come out of the
field. I had to hire a truck and take them to market at West Jefferson,
and that cost me on average ten cents a bushel, maybe. And while I was
sitting in there, the government man who controlled the price of beans
come up and said that was the prettiest … [ Interruption: In come some people of Mr. Ham's. Mr. Ham begins to
talk to friends for several minutes and talks again of the story
about the "Honolulu."
And they did a television story about that?
Yes.
On "One Step Beyond"?
"One Step Beyond," it was that story. Since I've been working here at Bassett the past five years, this young friend of mine… Let me go back to the beans.
And then I'll finish this later.
The government man that we were talking about assessed the price of the
beans. He said, law, that's the prettiest beans he'd seen that year. The
price would be sixty cents a bushel. That's the exact price that I had
in the beans that day. And I was a-hoping that when the buyer would see
them that he'd give me seventy cents a bushel. When the buyer came
around he said, "I'll give you forty cents a bushel." So that left me
paying people twenty cents a bushel just to take my beans. I lost twenty
cents a bushel on the beans that year. The rest of the beans I had to
leave
That was just terrible.
What I've never been able to understand is why we paid the government man the money to control the price of it, and all he was doing was just drawing the money and writing and wasting pencil. Because that was twenty cents a bushel. The buyer wouldn't give but forty cents, and he had put sixty cents a bushel.
Do you think there was ever something between these government men and the buyers? You think they ever had anything up their sleeves?
No, I never thought that. I thought it was just an idiotic thing, taking our freedoms one by one, when we could pay a government man to something like that, and then he didn't have any more control over anything than that. A waste of money, a waste of time. Maybe he couldn't use his brain for nothing else; I don't know. But it seems like our government has wasted so much that could have been put to good use, just worthless things like that. It has hurt me. It's taught me to distrust my government. I can't help it. Some of the hardest times I ever saw was when our government… One year we didn't have a bite of meat in the house. We weren't asking nobody for nothing. But on this year—it must have been in '36 or '37—our government come and got our next-door neighbor's pigs, twelve of them, and killed them and buried them. And two or three families there with not a bite of meat in the house. Not a bite.
Now why did they do this?
Oh, to run the price of other pigs up.
Did they do this with this man's permission, or did they just come in and kill them?
He kind of begged them to let him give them to some family that needed them. No, that wasn't our government's wishes at that time. That is what has brought us up to what we're in today. Right now it's pretty hard for me to say anything good about our government.
It's kind of ironic that all the people were …
All the people throughout the world that were starving, and that next year our government took millions of bushels of wheat out in the ocean and dumped it. Now we have never paid for those pigs. We have paid interest on the money year after year after year until today. That's still down in this big debt that's hanging over our head. Done nobody no good. The millions of bushels of wheat that was dumped in the ocean in '37 and '38 may have kept us out of the War; if we had just given and helped the hungry people instead of making them fight, maybe things would have been better. I don't know where the Lord was at when all this was going on.
He was still there, I guess.
He was bound to have been there, and some of these days He's going to frown on what we've been doing, maybe.
This time you were talking about when you-all didn't have hardly anything to eat, was that during the Depression, or was that way after?
I don't even remember the Depression.
You were born right after that, I guess.
I was born before… Well, I don't even know what the
I know it. My mother had a problem remembering about it, too.
I've heard so much talk about it. Some people refer to the good old days
when you was making a nickel an hour.
The good old days that the people talk so much about was when they were paying a nickel for a Coca-Cola, but they don't realize that they were making about a nickel an hour and it was taking one hour's work to buy one Coca-Cola, compared to if you're making three dollars an hour now, you'll get fifteen Coca-Cola's for one hour's work.
Is that what that lady was making, working in Bassett?
Yes.
Three dollars an hour, and she's complaining.
This lady was complaining about Coca-Cola's being so high-priced now, twenty cents apiece. Said she could remember the time back when she was making ten cents an hour, that she had money left. A Coca-Cola was just a nickel. And I said, "Lady, if a Coca-Cola was a nickel and you were making ten cents an hour, that took thirty minutes to buy one Coca-Cola, compared to buying fifteen Coca-Cola's now for an hour's work." And she said she had never thought about the good times and bad times that way. She was talking about it nickel for nickel. So I really don't know what the Depression was. I don't want to go back to the times right after the Depression.
Your father was in farming? Is that what he did?
Yes, he was a farmer.
About how many acres did he own?
About ninety acres, I guess. And the government would let us raise one-tenth of one acre of tobacco to raise a family of eight on. At one time we were cut down to one-tenth of an acre. And that just wasn't enough for eight in a family to live on. So when we got old enough we had to scatter out. And there was no jobs. The job that I had taken at the hospital before the War paid me twenty dollars a month for eighty-four hours a week work.
There wasn't any industry back in the county?
No industry whatsoever. No way to make a living. Well, it was so far back, we didn't pipe the sunshine in, but we carried a lot of moonshine with us …
… on Saturday nights. Carried it in gallon jugs.
Did your father ever make any of that?
You would be ashamed.
I had never seen my father drunk, drinking liquor, never. What he done before we got up that old, I don't know.
Did you-all ever drink any, you and all your brothers?
Not while we were at home. We wasn't allowed to. We often went to church.
One night we'd go to one church, maybe up in Virginia. The next night
we'd go up Horse Creek to another church. Sometimes it'd be eight or ten
miles walking. No automobile. We didn't even have
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[When I got] back to North Carolina, he said, "What happened to you?" I
said, "I went in to listen to the preacher."
Yes, but I met the sheriff coming out.
So you went in.
I was going in.
(To James) Roy got out of it that way. He was smart.
No, but he searched me one time for a gallon of liquor. Me on the
motorcycle. Now I never had a gallon of liquor in my life. That highway
police scared me the worst I was ever scared in my life.
(To the others) You-all straighten me out if he starts telling
(To James or Robert) It may have been before you and I met.
How young were you then, when they stopped you on the motorcycle?
Twenty-two, I guess. I didn't give them no race, because I was already stopped and right at dark. And in sections of the country, just like you have gangs now, the ones of us from North Carolina, the ones up in Virginia were waiting on us to whip us in gang fights.
Were they just gangs of friends or boys or something? What?
This was the sheriff's, but I thought it was a gang that was after me.
Did these gangs ever get into fights or anything?
Not with me, because it was too easy to run.
Yes, a lot of times they'd fight. It wasn't the gang fights like we have now.
There wasn't anybody killed or nothing like that.
No, but sometimes mighty wrung.
These big gangs, did they have motorcycles, or what kind of gang was it? Did they have automobiles?
That was on foot. There wasn't too many automobiles and cars back in
those days. I have walked… I'd hitch a ride of
And neither one of us was drinking.
Tell her about running up the telephone pole.
Yeah, I had a run-in with women.
That's true, what he's telling you, but he'll lie to you about the way it happened.
Okay, let's hear about that…
It's something I can't tell, Patty. No, it's not that bad. I was scared of women, especially this one, and she didn't look like this one [like Patty].
And she wasn't as nice a girl as this one. And she made a grab at me, said, "You're the one I want."
Where was this? Where did this happen at?
That was over on Horse Creek at Tuckerdale.
How old were you then, just a young one?
I was twenty or more. And instead of climbing the telephone pole, I clumb the guy wire by my hands like a monkey, faster than she could run.
And I stayed up on the telephone pole till she left.
It's true.
Patty, you're a grown girl. She said she'd been with every man there except me, and she made a grab at me. And until today, if she's still alive, she never caught the one that went up the telephone wire.
Now, James, that sounds kind of bad on you.
Yes, he was there.
Yes, but I wasn't in the '34 Chevrolet.
I don't remember nothing about a '34 Chevrolet.
Well, they'd take those women for a ride.
Well, you're talking.
I know it.
Well, we don't have to talk about that one any more. Changing
Yes.
How many nights a week did you go?
Well, through the summer …
About every night.
You had to walk. There were no automobiles to ride. And they'd have bigger crowds at church then than you have now, because the people enjoyed walking back home. And crowds of us would go five or six miles to church, and then we would all walk home of a night.
What kind of things did you do at the service? Did you-all have a preacher, or was it mainly singing, or what?
It would be for revival services that we'd go every night. I didn't go much to Sunday school. I reckon it was in lieu of the trip home. Enjoyed walking with the crowd. I was afraid to walk by myself; there was too many boogers out.
I've walked backwards many a time to keep a booger from coming up behind
me. One time, we didn't have running water in the house, and we heard
that there was a store in Lansing that had two sinks. This was back
during the War, and we decided if we got up at three o'clock, we could
walk the five miles to Lansing and buy the sink and then go on to
school, to keep someone else from getting it. So we'd walked a little
over a mile. It was around four o'clock, and you know that's the part of
the day that it's the darkest. Me and my brother got out to where John
Sheets lives, and there was a gap where
… so my brother broke first, and if that man or whatever it was behind us, when we got to the top of the hill he was running pretty fast. We got way into Lansing before dark. Yes, I was scared. Now, had I been the only one that see that, then I would think that I was imagining something. But there was two of us saw the same one. We both spoke. And we thought it was John Sheets, and we asked John about it that afternoon. He said no, he wasn't out that early. And what scared us, it bothered us; it was right behind us within five or six foot of us and not making a bit of racket walking in the gravel.
Were you-all walking then, or were you-all running?
After about twenty foot, we were running.
We would hit the ground about every twenty foot. That was moving on, wasn't it, Robert?
We were going to Lansing to buy a kitchen sink.
Oh, yes, you had said that.
You couldn't find one. That was during the War. And we wanted one to put in the house so we wouldn't have to get up of a morning and go carry a bucket of water. And the way we bought our clothes, we'd gather peppermint, spearmint, elderflowers, dig all kinds of herbs, pick black-berries, anything we could pick and take to the store and sell, we'd do that to help buy our clothes. And my mother made soap out of lye. A little rough; it didn't smell as good as the soap you go to the store and buy today, and a little harder to make than it was to go buy it. And these people that has it so rough now and starving to death and longing for the old days, I wish they had a little bit of that.
Lye soap. That's rough on your skin, too.
In 1949 I had the motorcycle wreck. Had both legs broke. And there was a
city fellow from Newton went up to Horse Creek to go groundhog hunting.
And he was pretty well drunk, and he left his wife there at my mother's
where I was at until him and these other gentlemen could go groundhog
hunting. And they'd been gone a good little bit, walking across the
hill, and he saw a groundhog and he shot it. And my uncle hollered at
him and said, "Good Lord, get on that groundhog. It's getting away." And
he jumped on, and it was a polecat; it wasn't a groundhog.
By the time he got back to the car, his wife was in the car and ready to
go. And I didn't know that had happened. I saw her jump out of the car
and run. And she blessed him out, and she wouldn't get
I don't blame her.
So they put him on the back of a truck and took him back to Horse Creek,
because the polecat didn't do any good for the perfume. And they got to
Horse Creek, and they got a gallon of soap belonging to my Aunt Hattie
and took him down to Horse Creek and tried to wash that off of him,
knowing all the time that that lye soap wouldn't do no good. And they
rubbed all the hide off of him
… and still had to bury his clothes. And I hadn't saw him until, say, five or six years ago. That would have been up in twenty years that I hadn't seen the feller since. I met him out where I work one day, and I said, "Hey, you killed any polecats lately?"
He stopped and said, "You're one of them Horse Creekers. You are a Ham or a Brooks, one. Which one are you?"
Did she make that soap to sell?
No, just made it to wash clothes with.
To save some money.
Yes.
So you-all sold tobacco, and then you-all sold your wild plants and stuff. Who bought the wild herbs and stuff that you-all gathered?
At the stores.
And then they bought them for somebody else or something, or what? Do you know what they did with them?
They would take and make chewing gum out of the peppermint and
No, I never heard of that.
Oh, there's plenty of them here. You've saw them plenty of times, up on Buffalo Creek.
I probably didn't call it; I probably just saw it.
Next time you go down the river, you look at those trees that's on both sides of the river. The biggest part of them is bamgillies. They look about like these sycamore trees; they favor them a good bit, except they're slimmer.
Were their leaves good to chew?
No. The buds really smell good when you get them. They're so heavy and sticky. They make some kind of salve out of them, I believe. They have a good healing quality about them.
Did you-all do any other things to make money?
We'd go help the neighbors hoe corn or whatever we could do at small jobs. Even the neighbors didn't have the money in a lot of cases to pay for the work. Now that's not in the Depression; that was many years after the Depression. That's what's got me mixed up about what is good times and what is bad times. I don't know the difference.
It was all kind of the same. That's the way my mother was. She was trying to tell me about it. Did your father have any cattle or anything like that?
You had to have some cattle and some sheep, from time to time
Do you remember that, James?
You had a pet sheep up there, too, didn't you?
You was the one that got on the fence.
And James couldn't get across the fence because the fence was loose, and
he'd got about halfway across it and the sheep would butt him, go
"Ba-a-a-a", and James would swing out pretty near the wall and come back
back at the sheep. And that would make the sheep mad, and [sheep noise],
butt him again.
If you got in a field with a grown buck sheep, you could be in trouble.
Myself and Carl Spencer were walking up the meadow one day to keep from
getting muddy. You see, a car couldn't get up that road in the
wintertime. From October until April or May, an automobile couldn't get
up this highway leaving about a mile. On this particular day it had been
raining. The creek was up; the branch was up. And the road was so muddy
we didn't want to walk it, so we walked up the meadows. Had to go
through the meadow where the fighting sheep was at. This other gentleman
had a stick to keep the sheep off of us, and he was swinging the stick
back and forward and making the old fighting sheep to stand back. So
we'd walk backward going up the branch, and I gave him a shove. He
dropped his stick. The sheeps was about to get him.
And I was running toward an old beech tree that was standing out above
the fence, and I made the tree before the sheep got me. As I went under
the tree, I grabbed a limb and swung up and went and clumb the tree.
Well, I didn't get up in the tree till about a dozen hornets had stung
me. I had stuck my head in a hornets' nest. I turned loose of the tree
and fell to the ground right by the side of the sheep. And there was a
hornet that popped the sheep right on the nose
And hitting big weeds, and we both laid down right by the side of each
other to get away from the hornets. Every time a hornet would sting that
poor sheep, he'd go, "Ba-a-a, ba-a-a."
Did you-all ever have cockfights or anything like that?
No. I don't think I could have watched anything like that. You see, I
killed a groundhog one time. And I looked down at the
Did you-all go hunting a lot?
No. James did, but I could never kill anything. I was forced to get rid of a cat two or three years ago, and I had to get a neighbor to kill my cat. I didn't have the heart. It had been run over with a car. And I guess that's the reason that's kept me in this shop all these years, making musical instruments. I can't go hunting; I don't like to go fishing; my wife won't let me run around with women.
I had to have something to do.
What kinds of things did you do when you were a kid, to have fun?
We made what they call now Appalachian toys. Some of the first toys I remember would be these blocks; some people call them clackers. They're making them out of plastic now, but we made them out of wood. And we had slingshots that we'd shoot and kill snakes. We made motorcycles.
How did you make those?
Well, we called them motorcycles. They was just something to coast off
the hill. We had to work to push them up the hill, and in some instances
we'd saw the wheels off of a log of black gum. We had brakes on them. We
had springs on the seats, but the way they were constructed, if you hit
a rock with the front wheel it would throw you,
And we'd push those up the hill. It'd take us a whole lot longer to push them up the hill than it would to come down. That was in the summer that we'd do that. In the winter we always had bobsleds that we'd make out of wood, and put cradle fingers on the runners to make them run faster. Anything we could do to get up a little more speed. One winter we were going to put a set of wings on the bobsled and fly it across the branch. I like to froze to death that day, because it didn't work.
Just got to the branch.
It just got to the branch, right in the branch.
You were telling a story earlier about going swimming and everything.
is on the
spot. There was four of us boys. I'd say we were thirteen or fourteen,
maybe fifteen years old, and we were going swimming. We didn't have
bathing suits like you've got now. When you come to a place deep enough,
you just went swimming.
… keeping an eye on us, keeping us in the water. My toenail was about to come off over there; it froze.
Did your daddy make you work a whole bunch, or did you-all think it was just…
We thought we had to work hard… Mountain life, I guess, is the best life there is. But for a kid that wants to do something, play, work is hard. Hoeing corn, beans, potatoes.
But then you got to go out and have your fun afterwards, then.
One of the things that I can't understand, I don't know where it came
from or what has happened to it, but we had a game the first day of May
every year. A group of people would get together, and they'd go and hang
a May basket. Picked the first flowers they could find, and if they go
up to a neighbor's porch and throw that basket on the porch and holler,
"May basket!" people in the house were obligated to catch every person
in the crowd. And sometimes it would take till twelve or
I remember doing something like that when I was a little kid. We'd take
bundles of flowers and go and leave them up on people's porch and ring
the doorbell and run. But we never had them chase us.
In that section of the country they felt obligated to catch every person in the crowd. And the first one that the old farmer could catch, if she was a young, pretty girl, he got to kiss her.
She would run to get away from him.
I see why they'd run now.
But sometimes ladies would dress up like men to keep the men from kissing them. Well, after a hard day's work of plowing, I don't see how the old farmers had the energy for that.
But they all, at that time in life, everybody looked forward to the first day of May. And sometimes we'd do that the entire month of May. Every night somewhere, somebody would be doing that.
And you'd get in big crowds to go around and do this?
Oh, yes. The bigger the crowd, the more you could laugh and holler and
have a good time. You didn't laugh out loud until after you'd hung your
May basket. That was supposed to be a surprise. Catch
Did you have a lot of music around you all the time? Like in your family, did people play?
Not in my family. There was no music. We had one old Victrola that my daddy had won at a sale. They had wrote everybody's name down and drawed a name out, and my daddy won it. And he couldn't stand music. He liked music, but the people that played it, he thought they were all lazy and wouldn't work. If they played music through the day when you could do a little farming …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
I wanted to ask you about your first dulcimer. How did you get to making musical instruments? How did you ever get interested in that?
Everywhere that there was a gathering, some of the mountain people had
some of their instruments along and played. And I always loved fiddling,
banjo picking, or anything. And the nearest I ever come
And it was an hour before I got so I could talk. Now being able to do
that eased it a little bit, but I had never been on stage again until
just recently. It was thirty years before I was able to get back on
stage in front of people again, because of that one incident. But last
summer, which was twenty-nine years from the year that that happened
then, this old lady here in Newton asked me to take her to the mountains
with me on Saturday morning. I agreed to take her, and about six or
eight miles from where this incident took place is where she was going.
And I'd never been over there in all these years, twenty-nine years that
I had never been to this road since, where this lady was going. And when
we got to where she was going, instead of sitting her out by the side of
the road, after driving a hundred miles I took her on up to the house
and knocked on the door to see if there was anybody at home. I didn't
want to leave her there by herself. I knocked on the door, and a real
old, grey-headed man came to the door. The only thing that he could say
was, "My God, Roy Ham. The last time I saw you, you turned a flipflop
off of the stage at Lansing. You just made a durn fool out of the feller
that was a-picking the banjo." And in the past six months, that has
helped me a million times, what that one gentleman said, knowing that
the people didn't remember me as being the person that had lost his
voice and got stage fright and scared to death; they remembered me as
the one who turned a flip off of the stage in the crowd. The reason the
people had known me, I had put up rope swings there in the gym a few
weeks before that, and I had turned flips off of the ropes, and they
broke with me and left me
I was the only person in that whole… Was you there that night? (To James, his brother) Well, I guess you jumped up, too, because there wasn't a soul there setting.
Were they afraid you were going to get hurt?
They knew I was going to be killed.
Because, see, I had jumped from the ropes and hung my heels over this bar and was swinging on the bar by my heels, after I had turned loose from the swings. But what I done, I had swung it up this way and got it over the crowd and had turned the flip up here over the crowd. And that had already unnerved them, and when I turned that flip they thought I was going to land in them. I went back the other way and turned loose and hung by my heels on this other bar, and that's when it broke.
How did you learn to do all that?
Swinging on grapevine.
That was the monkey in him.
Like Robert said, the monkey that was in me. We used to see how far we
could go, swinging from limbs up there in the mountains. We
… but we enjoyed what we could do. And a lot of times in the winter… People talking back then about they could take five dollars and buy all their groceries. They didn't buy all their groceries; they just bought the seasoning to go in the groceries. The groceries, in a lot of cases, dug in a hole and put out here in under the snow. And you could rabbit hunt in the winter, and you knew where a certain pile in the snow was at. And you'd go out there and dig in under that, and some of the hillbillies had their apples laying on the ground with straw cover and snow, and that snow would keep the apples all winter. And that was good eating …
… if you went rabbit hunting.
When did you first start making dulcimers?
I don't remember the year. I had been making violins.
How did you first learn how to make your violins?
I made my first fiddle out of a cornstalk. We had always made our
Christmas toys out of wood. The little men that can dance on a board,
slingshots. Everything like that was handmade. And we enjoyed playing
with them at the time, but we learned to hate them, all of them, because
we wanted store-bought toys. And now that's what the children want, is
these handmade toys now. No way that I can furnish what the people want,
even right around here, just wooden toys. But the first dulcimer that I
ever saw… Now you've
What was that preacher's name?
Walter Gray, and his grandfather had built the dulcimer. He wouldn't play
nothing but church songs on it; he wouldn't even pick
How did you learn to make your other instruments?
Trial and error, I guess, a whole lot. People like Albert Hash were great, mountain people showing me the different things to do.
He taught you how to make fiddles.
Yes.
Did you make any of those before you first made your dulcimer?
Yes, ma'am. I'd made several violins before I made any dulcimers. The
first dulcimer that I made, me and this halfbreed Indian sawed the wood
out with a crosscut saw. And it took us a half
Now you can do it in five minutes, almost.
Yes, I saw one out in five minutes now. And these American people talking about their light bill being high? I would not, under no circumstances, regret paying my light bill because it would be worth the entire light bill to saw out one dulcimer, for the price of my month's light bill. I'd rather pay my whole month's light bill than to saw out the one dulcimer with a crosscut saw. Now after I got out of crosscut saw I made me a frame saw, looked like a window, and used that to saw dulcimers out for years. Dulcimers, fiddles, guitars.
I heard one man up in Avery County saws his wood out with a chain saw.
It wastes a lot of wood.
Because I guess with this real fine saw, you save as much wood as possible. Not as much of it's turned into sawdust.
I worked hard to get bowls of wood for years out of old furniture. We
went to a sale in the mountains several years ago, and on one of the old
beds that they had up there they had a bed slat that I wanted, a real
pretty piece of wood. And I didn't want the bed—it was no good—I just
wanted that bed slat. And somebody bid fifty cents on the bed. And that
started it off. I would give a dollar for it. I run it to twelve dollars
and a half to get that one little five-and-a-half-inch-wide board, and
as long as a bed is wide. I bid twelve dollars and a half; that was a
fortune back then. That must have been in the late forties, I guess,
early fifties. Well,
So I got the board for nothing.
I bet he was mad. He could have got it for fifty …
No, he thought it was funny that a person would be crazy enough. But if he'd have saw the fiddle that I made out of the old bed slat, he'd have probably wanted the bed slat back. That, I think, was the best violin I ever made.
So all your instruments and stuff, it kind of gives you some satisfaction
besides your work? I don't know what I'm asking.
The satisfaction I get making people happy is my pay for it. I've never charged for the instruments. In fact, tonight I sent one all the way to South America. (To a woman who was starting to teach down there)
That's a real sweet girl.
She was. As far as I'm concerned, I'd never seen that girl before. The
one that was in here a while ago? She came in last Sunday night, I
believe. Came through the door, and the gentleman that was with her
introduced her to me, told me where she was from. She was living down in
South America. And I told her who I was, and
I know for a while there you were thinking about doing dulcimers and making things for a living. Have you changed your idea about that, or how do you feel about doing that, about selling your instruments?
Well, I've got to live. If things gets bad enough till I have to quit the plant, I'll have to charge for the dulcimers, fiddles, guitars, mandolins, banjos. My wife throwed a pressure cooker lid at me last year, and I tore it up and made a five-string banjo out of it. Did you see that thing?
Yes, I saw that. That was pretty.
And more people wanting that than any other banjo in the county. You didn't see that one, did you, Robert? I'll show you a picture of it.
That was pretty.
I'm going to keep making these instruments as long as I can get around.
That's "Arkansas Traveller."
"Arkansas Traveller." Several years ago, before any radio or television,
you'd get a bunch of fishermen together, and they'd always
Yes.
You like it.
Yes.
Well, you get throwed in jail if you play that in the state of Texas. It's against the law to pick that tune in the state of Texas.
Why is that?
In 1930—I believe this is right—that was one of the most popular tunes in
the country. And they had a drought in Texas, and it sure didn't look
like it would ever rain again in the state of Texas. The man that wrote
the tune, they grabbed him up and put him in jail, and he was in jail
for thirty days. And they passed a law that they couldn't play the tune
"It Ain't A-Going to Rain No More" in the state of Texas. And that man,
being that they had had him in jail before the law was wrote, he had to
sign an affidavit that as long as he lived in
Now we have one of the prettiest mountain tunes that's ever been wrote,
is against the law to pick it in the state of North Carolina. Did you
know that?
You know any words to it?
I don't know too many of the words. I thought it was awfully foolish that people would pass a law that you couldn't pick and sing a tune as beautiful as that. As ridiculous. And I always thought that us in North Carolina, as smart as we are, had better sense than that. Last year I went down to the library here in Newton and picked up a book, and a tune that I'd heard at box suppers, any kind of hillbilly place, I'd heard that song years and years. And in there it said it was a misdemeanor to play that tune in the state of North Carolina.
Don't you reckon some of her family got in behind it, objected to it?
No, it seems like that while he was in prison in Raleigh waiting to be
executed for the murder of Ellen Smith, he called for a guitar. He
wanted to pick a guitar during his last few weeks on earth. So they took
him a guitar, and that was the tune that he wrote. And he was picking it
and singing it when one of his buddies or a good friend went to see him,
or maybe some of his family. And they brought it back out. And
everywhere there was a gathering that tune caught on;
"Poor Ellen Smith."
Yes. And every time that they'd get together and they'd start picking that, you would have the people that wanted him set free because he wrote the song. You had the people that felt sorry for the girl and wanted him executed because he'd killed Ellen Smith. And then you had them mean fellows that just wanted to fight. So you had a big fight every time …
… picking and singing that song. And they made it a misdemeanor to pick and sing that in a crowd in the state of North Carolina. Did you know that, Robert?
No, I'd heared the song, but I didn't know …
I was fortunate enough to go to the school. I started picking and cutting up with the children at school here lately. I went down to East Newton a few months back. And I was picking the song, blowing on the harmonica, and telling the story about "It Ain't A-Going to Rain No More." Did you ever hear that?
Yes, you told me.
Down here at the school, I was telling about it against the law to play
"Ellen Smith" in the state of North Carolina, and the little old kids
commenced to giggling and putting their hand over their mouth,
"Hoo-hoo." And the principal come over and says, "Mr. Ham, do you know
what the children are laughing about?" And I said, "Yes, ma'am. Ellen
Smith is sitting right there in the back of the room." And their music
One of the loveliest ladies that you could ever see. We were sitting in here one evening, and this southern hillbilly from California (he came from California and was studying to be a hillbilly up in the mountains) came through the door and asked me for the words to that tune. There was a nice gentleman standing over here all dressed up; he was a big lawyer. I never had seen the guy before. He'd been standing here ten or fifteen minutes. This gentleman that teaches music came in and asked for the tune of "Ellen Smith". And I said, "Well, why do you want it? You can't pick it in the state of North Carolina." And he looked at me and said, "What?" I said, "It's against the law." And this fellow that was dressed up in a suit and necktie …
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
… (I want you to go to the library) and see if it's still on the books as
being a misdemeanor. And if it was, he'd see if he couldn't get it
changed. I was just pulling Wayne Erbson's leg about he couldn't pick
it. He could pick it from one end of North Carolina to the other without
being arrested now. I bet there isn't no cop knows whether it's against
the law.
Why is that?
Because …
Maybe there's something I don't know.
No, ma'am. It's not bad.
Well, why didn't he want you to sing that?
I don't know.
I like that song. I hadn't heard that one. I can't believe
That's an old one.
That is an old one. That come out in what, the thirties?
As far back as I can remember, it was out.
Yes, we had them at church in Buffalo Creek.
I didn't know you lived in Buffalo.
Well, I've been to them before. That's where my mother's from. She was born up in Buffalo, and I've been to them.
We know a tune about "Buffalo gal, won't you come out tonight?"
Oh, it's not!? Yes, it is, too. You know, that might have been wrote for Miss Dilley.
Yes.
Are you sure that was written about Buffalo?
Did you-all really sing that song about the girls in Buffalo? You-all are kidding me, aren't you?
Yes, ma'am, "Buffalo gal, won't you come out tonight, come out
It's a real old one.
I just always thought it was Buffalo, New York, that they were talking about.
I can remember my dad, he used to play it on his guitar.
I doubt if that tune has ever been played in Buffalo, New York. That's a hillbilly tune, honey.
You didn't hear it in Buffalo, New York, though, did you?
No.
You ask your mother whether it's writ about her.
She would have been about sweet sixteen. No, she'd have been about sweet ten or something like that, maybe, when that tune was around.
That'll tickle her.
Turk Thompson was the one that every box supper he went to, he had to pick that tune, "Buffalo Gal," and "I Got a Poppa Standing in the Rain." He was the one got us shot at that night.
Why did he get shot at?
Because he was singing "Brown's Ferry Blues."
It was a popular song then. We had the preacher up there. If
Sherman Graybeal.
Because I know a lot of Graybeals married in our family. Most of them related to part of that same one. Why was he so mad over "Hard surface road"?
We hollered "Biscuit" at him. The same thing.
It's just that you were hollering at him.
Just that you hollered at him. And a lot of times he'd blame that on the Ham boys, the hollering, and I don't think either one of us ever hollered at doors.
Did you-all have a reputation back then?
No. Our reputation wasn't anywhere along that line.
When you went to Norfolk, did they ever make fun of the way you talked?
Like if you talked like a hillbilly, did they ever make
I could sit and talk for thirty minutes and have them all… One of my
favorite tales of Norfolk was to get a bunch of them there city dudes
round of a night, and they'd be drinking beer. My favorite tale was to
tell them about my daddy was a logger, and he believed in cutting logs
for logging companies. And he'd be about fifteen or twenty miles away
from the closest home. And you know those people in a place like that,
they believed every word I said. And I could make up a tale—it'd take
thirty minutes to tell it—but at the end of it my daddy had sent me down
about fifteen miles to a country store to get something to eat and some
bear traps because the bears had been stealing our groceries. And he
wanted me to get it, and I was about fourteen or fifteen years old at
that time. And come back up the holler, and the bear got after me. And I
run, and I dropped the groceries. And he wasn't after groceries that
day; he was after me. And I come to this chestnut tree that had died
out—the blight had killed it—and it was so big that you could drive a
car in it if there had been a hole in the trunk. It was hollow on the
inside where it had been dead for years and years. And I told them that
I just clumb up the tree limb and was standing up on top. And I'd
dropped my gun, so I couldn't shoot the bear. Had an old muzzle-loading
gun, and it wouldn't shoot but one time. And when I got up on top, my
foot slipped and I fell down in the tree. And I said the bear was
sticking his paw in and grabbing at me, and he almost got me. And these
silly
There was three of them.
Yes, there was three of them. That I had three traps. (I had already told
them that Dad didn't have the money just to get the three traps. The
price of them was so high that he didn't have enough money left from the
groceries.) And the first bear just about got me, the first time he
stuck his paw through a knothole and grabbed at me. And after a little
while of that dodging them, I got tired of it, and so I happened to
think that I had the three bear traps. And I caught the first bear. I
opened the trap up, and when he stuck his foot through there to scratch
me I stuck that bear trap on him. And then I had the bear caught; he
couldn't get the ham out of the knothole.
Now you talk about getting a cussing. I got one the first time I told it.
And they didn't believe that.
No. If I'd told them I'd clubbed the bears to death, I'd have been a hero.
There was one old fellow, sixty-three or sixty-four years old, and he believed every word of it, Sly Joins. The reason we had teamed up with him, he had a brand new LaSalle automobile. Now you young people never saw a LaSalle.
Was it something fancy back then?
What are you talking about? It'd be fancy now if you could get one. It was a Rolls Royce, but it was made by Chrysler. It would be like the Lincoln Continental is to the T model now. When you rode in the LaSalle, you were riding in solid comfort. And we took up with him. I didn't know the way of those city people, and I was learning fast. They'd do many things I wouldn't think about doing.
Did they ever try to take advantage of you or anything like
No, I hadn't even went through school yet. After the War was over I quit
and went back and finished high school later. We had a record, an old
song about Kenny Wagoner, "Kissing Kenny." And I was playing that one
day, and my daddy had walked to the store. And I was playing that, and
Dad come up, the only time that I believe he ever really enjoyed
listening to a record. He said, "Well, they got Kenny Wagoner today."
They had caught Kenny Wagoner that day. They had got the message down
there that the FBI had turned a gun. Now he was captured over there in
your country, (to Robert) close to Bristol. And they had opened fire on
him without asking him to surrender and had put forty-two bullets into
the place he was at, and he got out of it with his hands up without a
scratch, just grinning. Stood there grinning.
What were they after him for?
Murder. He must have been a lover-boy, because he kissed a lady sheriff
and got away with kissing the lady sheriff. You see, part of the song
goes…
It was in Leaksville, Alabama, wasn't it?
It was something about Leaksville.
That's where the woman sheriff was at, that turned him loose.
She didn't turn him loose.
Well, he got loose.
That's the reason they called him "Kissing Kenny."
Did you ever hear a song about "Little Omie Wise"?
"Naomi Wise"?
Yes, that's supposed to have lived in Ashe County. Got killed by her lover. Somewhere around there they got and killed Omie.
I've heard that, but I haven't heard that since I was ten years old, I don't guess.
I heard another man playing it up here one time. I learned a song. I was playing it one time, and my mother heard it and she said she'd heard it when she was a little girl, heard the story about little Omie Wise.
Now if you know "Naomi …
I don't know it on the dulcimer.
When did you first live in Newton?
After a bad bean crop in '47.
I moved to Newton to repay the money that I had borrowed
Gosh. So did you move right here?
I moved within a mile of where I'm at right now.
And you're living here ever since.
Lived right here, within walking distance of where I'm at right now.
Did you start working for Bassett right then?
No. I started working up at Broyhill Furniture, bookkeeping, and I wasn't too happy with that. So then I started driving a truck for the State of North Carolina. And it was a close election day in '48. And they asked me to vote for Harry Truman and give the Democrats $2.50 for campaign money, and I said, "No, I'm not giving no campaign money to the Democrats." So they fired me.
Wow. Gosh.
That was in '48. A job was hard to find back then.
I don't remember that.
I got fired in '48 because I wouldn't give the Democrats $2.50 for their campaign money.
Oh, well, in that case …
I want to ask you something else. Do you remember the time I got caught driving without a driver's license? Do you remember what I told the police chief here in Newton? Now you was with me. I give you the keys.
I remember something about it, but I don't remember just
You remember they had caught me on Friday night. And I asked you to go
with me to the jailhouse to see about it. The officers were real nice
about it. I'd been robbed. Everything in my pocketbook was stolen, and I
didn't have no driver's license, so I got caught. And they wrote me out
a citation to be down at the jailhouse on Saturday. I went down there
and took this gentleman along with me in case. I didn't have any
driver's license, so I had my car parked right out in front of the
jailhouse. And they had a real nice police chief here in Newton by the
name of W. W. Hendricks. We went up to the jailhouse, and he was mean,
wasn't he, when you called him that? And he said, "Would you give us
twenty-five dollars to forget about it?" I told him no. When I paid my
taxes, I didn't have no twenty-five dollars to give. He said, "Well,
I'll put you in jail. I'll just lock you up." And I give Robert my key.
I said, "Robert, you drive the car home." And I says, "You'll have to
let me go Monday morning." And he says, "Just why will
I have to let you go on Monday morning?" I said, "I was talking to a
highway patrolman out here, and he told me that there wasn't a damn
thing that you or no body else could do about my driver's license. 'If
they were good in Raleigh, 'he said, ‘they can hold you till Monday, and
you can get them."’ And he said, "Well:
That's true, he lied. That thing doesn't keep a hundred and twenty when
you got two on it.
Anything you can pick.
I don't have a pick.
You've got one there in your mouth, babe.
I know, but I've got to use fingers. I can't hold it and hold the dulcimer. My fingers are too clumsy.
"Buffalo Gal," being your mama's from Buffalo.
You will have to learn to play that.
I have to learn to play that. Did you hear of one called "Soldier's Joy"?
Yes.
I like that one.
No, there are not any words.
Somebody wrote some words one time.
What?
Jimmy Driftwood? You know, he's a man from Arkansas. He wrote some words to that one time, and I know a couple of verses to it.
Well, let's hear them.
I'm no soldier, but I enjoyed that.
That's the only one I can play decent.
No, it's not the only one you can play.
I liked that.
I like it, too.
Yes, ma'am.
Play another.
Pick "Wildwood Flower."
I never can play that one. I can't play that one good. I haven't learned quite yet how to play that.
Right here it is.
Why don't you play that one, too?
No, ma'am.
[END OF TAPE 2, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
Well, I'm learning something right after all.
Play some more.
Wouldn't take long, would it?
No.
Let's try it one time just a little bit faster.
Well, it wouldn't take you long.
Let's try this more often.
That's really pretty with two.
It is.
Won't that be easy for you to pick out, though,
Yes. I'll have to try it. I always get messed up on this part.
I wish we could practice just a little bit more on that. You should see some of the dulcimers this gal has made. She's made about as many as I have.
No.
I thought I had taught you all you knew about a dulcimer, and then you come off playing "Soldier's Joy."
I wish I could play that about "Buffalo Gal, Won't You Come Out Tonight?" I'd go and serenade your mama.
Right there where you had the motorcycle wreck is where her mama lived, that's Buffalo Creek.
By that one-lane bridge?
Right on that sharp curve, right above the bridge there.
I almost ran into a school bus there one time. I came around that corner,
and there was this big school bus right on that one-lane bridge.
Me and him would go down the highway at forty miles an hour and swap motorcycles. He had one motorcycle, and I had one.
If I'd have seen that, it would have scared me to death.
We did that more times than one, didn't we, Robert?
Yes, sir.
One time we was out down here below Newton. I'll never forget
And we was riding side by side, no brakes. He had warned us about riding side by side.
Well, one of us was out past the center line, side by side, and we met the highway patrolman. We saw his light come on, and we knowed he was coming after us. And I meant for Robert to take out through the woods; he took out just right down the highway. And he twisted the handle of his motorcycle and me right behind him. I knew I could have passed him. I couldn't have went much faster. And his exhaust pipe dropped right off. You couldn't see nothing but a solid flame coming out of that. We got down to where Nigger Town is at, and we just turned off down that dirt road and moving on. And there was a colored fellow the next day. He said, "What was the matter with you boys?"
And Robert met him up, and he said, "Just as you boys got out of sight—that dust hadn't cleared —a highway patrolman come down through here; he was moving on. Y'all must have been running." But I wanted to go out through the woods, and, instead of that, Robert took right on down the highway.
It was the funniest thing. Only two ways you could go in …
Did you have any black people living in Ashe County? Not too many ever did, did they?
No.
Weren't any at all?
Very few at that time.
What did they do? Were they farmers up there, or what?
They were black people.
Well, what did they do for a living? Were they the farmers like everybody else?
Yes.
Were there people in the county that were rich, you'd say, or that were more well off than other people?
Yes. The schoolteachers seemed to be a wealthy family. And we always thought that they were a little better than we were. Come to find out they were just common people. Awful sweet people.
Yes, awful sweet people. They'd pick you up at the hospital and take you
over town and drop you off. Even though you were supposed to be dead.
Even though you got the seat of your pants tore out.
They came over to my dad and mother's and told us that the two boys were
in bad shape. We thought they was dead. We went and saw the motorcycles
still laying in the ditch. And we pulled the motorcycles up and looked
at them. And then we thought about burning gravel to get up to the
hospital to see Freeman and Robert. "What happened to those two boys?"
"Oh, they walked over to West Jefferson to get some medicine." And got
over there, and they were standing over there in the drugstore window
getting their medicine at Graybeal's Drugstore in West Jefferson.
Freeman looked back and said, "What's them damn crazy girls laughing
about?"
He went to church a long time in Ashe County. How come you never went to church in all the years since then? Were the churches just not the same?
Wouldn't let him.
They won't let him, huh?
I know my mother's the same way, and I was just wondering.
Don't your mother go to church?
Well, she goes …
She wasn't over there that day, was she?
No. I'm sure she didn't go for a long time when we went to the church in Newton, but she went at home. She's like that way, too. She likes the church back home in Buffalo. But she don't like the churches down here.
There is a difference.
There's a big difference?
There's a big difference; it's just not the same.
Well, I guess there is. That's like she is. We've lived a lot of places. We never did live one place, always moving.
Did you ever hear the saying, "Now that's a dilley"? Now this is a
dilley. I tell you, when that rash got on the dilley, it just hung.
You got that thing to going?
Yes, it's still going. We're getting all this down.
I didn't know we were doing that.
I did. Got rash and dilley. Play that to your mother.
Mama won't want to meet me now, will she?
No, I'm not going to play that at home.
Every time that something was nice, "Oh, that's a dilley." It never was referred to as something, a rotten apple or anything. It was always something nice. "Oh, now that's a dilley." Mr. Dilley has heard that same remark, hasn't he?
Yes.
He laughed about it several times. I met her daddy at the same time. He
was a real nice gentleman, do a lot for you. A fellow come in here a
while back laughing and said, "Roy, I forgot your first name. Would you
have signed a note for me? I went everywhere I knowed to go trying to
get a loan and wanting somebody to give me a reference. And I walked in
the office and talking about the loan, and I looked down and there was
something made by Roy Ham laying on this gentleman's
Where, in the Farmers Home Administration?
Yes. A young boy. I said, "Well, now, if George had called me, I wouldn't have knowed I'd worked with the fellow, I didn't know his name." You remember the first Christmas I spent over at your house? (To Robert) Me and Geneva was sitting over there behind the stove, and it cold as this. And your grandpa standing there, and that woman was there that he'd got out of the pen. And that fellow was standing over there hollered and said, "Claude! Send So-and-so on over here." Claude reached up over the door and grabbed the shotgun, and that shotgun looked bigger than an anti-aircraft gun, knowing Claude Peters had shot a couple of people. He scared me to death. That stove was hot, but I stayed over, and old Geneva just laughed. She thought it was funny. Claude said, "I'm a-comin' shootin'." And on top of that, then the bird had me to drive him down on the mountain hunting for with that shotgun. Do you remember that, Robert?
Yes, I remember.
That was the thing that scared me, knowing that you could get shot. What was that feller's name, come up there that night causing the disturbance?
But he took Claude at his word. He didn't slow down down there on the mountain.
He kept going
Yes, he kept going. And his grandpa …
Dooley Kingston.
Yes. His grandpa was sitting out one night when we were going down around
the mountain—this was at Skull Gap, Virginia—and him and his first
cousin got tired of it, so him went off leaving Ma up on top of the
mountain. Now these hillbillies—they were hillbillies—and on this night
kind of bad and all just sitting around at the stove, a whole bunch of
men, and something went "Ka-boom!" Claude Jones said, "Oh, my God, there
goes my shotgun!" And it was his shotgun.
One night we didn't find his grandpa; we found his car. It had rolled over. And when he sobered up, he was in Pennsylvania with his car chains hung across his back.
That's right. They got word he had wound up in Pennsylvania over there in Chilhowie, Virginia.
How did he get up there?
He had hitchhiked. That old man. The day that I got married, he was the first person to come and eat lunch with me and my wife after I got married. I married a girl who's lovely.
Was she born here in Newton?
Yes. She was raised here in Newton. Never been out of Catawba County but a few times.
Really? What kind of work did she ever do?
She was a farmer. Cotton-picker.
Roy, that night was the only time I ever seen or heared of two guys
sitting in a four-door car, and all four doors would open and shut at
the same time.
I'll have to make you one of those.
Oh, yes, it has some real pretty work on it.
It's a lot easier to make than one of these.
Really? I've decided my next instrument I'm going to make, before I start on making anything else, is I want to make myself a guitar. I'm bound and determined, this summer I'm going to make myself a guitar, because I'm going to sell that one I've got. I'm going to make me one first, because I can't do without my guitar.
No, you can't.
But I'd like to learn how.
It's a pretty good guitar. Why don't you play us one number.
No, I'm not that good at it. I just like the instrument.
Just messin' around with it.
You can't mess around with Ellen Smith in the State of North Carolina.
Now you remember that.
I know. I'd sure remember that. Oh, glory.
I think she was going to get that book out of the library. She is a lovely person. She laughed; she had a big time.
One thing about Claude Peters: he believed in white liquor. Him and his first cousin… His first cousin lived with his grandpa at that time. And one of hisfriends said, "You will not offer Roy no liquor; he wouldn't drink it."
Was this your grandpa?
No, his grandpa. I never had seen Claude Peters until I went up there that Christmas. And they had told him I wouldn't drink, there's no way that I would drink at that time. And these gentlemen wouldn't drink, but their grandpa was drunk all the time. He was a good old man, but he would fight any man drunk if they asked him to.
He fought to win, too.
He was going to win.
He was a man,
But I was treated as nice there as any place I've ever been in my life.
I'd go over there, and there was some of the best meals that a person
could ever hope to get, over there at Mary Peters', over there at Skull
on Whitetop Mountain in Virginia. Right above Chilhowie. But that
Christmas Claude set a quart of liquor down and he says, "Roy," he says,
"I can't offer you that, but if you drink it I won't say nothing."
You know you promised not to mention that.
He asked me not to tell your mama.
I don't reckon she would have mentioned anything about it.
It don't matter. Poor old Claude, he looked up with tears in his eyes. He said, "Roy, you know how to touch a man's heart, don't you?" We'd come over to register and got him. He had both legs broke; he was on crutches. And we had come over here to Newton. Took him back; we were living on the other side of town. And took him over there and set a pretty good-sized glass of whiskey down on his table, and he hadn't had any in two weeks over here at Newton. That Rob's mama. But don't you think they were punishing the old man a little too much, after him having it all of his life?
They was scared, I think, that he would get drunk and hurt himself.
Now, wait a minute. I didn't give him enough to get drunk. There's no way in the world that I would have… I gave him a drink before he ate, and that old man looked up with tears in his eyes. He said, "God, Roy, you know how to touch a man's heart, don't you?" And then he was bragging on Margaret. If you could have seen the look in his face, knowing that I wouldn't touch a drink of liquor, and then set it out in a glass for him.
If you didn't drink, what was you doing with whiskey at the house?
Wait a minute. I went and got it. I didn't drink, did I, Robert? Wasn't
no way.
Oh, she was mad when I come on home. I said, "Honey, I've been in jail.
And I was ashamed to get you to come get me." She was madder than fire.
No. I wasn't in jail. I was out at James', right around the corner out here.
It's a wonder she couldn't tell it was James' voice on the phone that time.
We hadn't been married too long, and I asked Margaret not to cut her
hair. "Don't have your hair cut." And she went and had it cut real
short. She had a permanent. And she was sick over it. I'll tell you,
that woman was sick. And we lived in the funny-shaped trailer at that
time, over yonder. And Margaret started in the door, and I hadn't
noticed her hair being cut short and had a permanent. She flipped her
hair like that and said, "You say something, I'm going home to Mama."
And so I called her "bald head." And I never heard such screaming in my
life. I never went in the house. I went and crawled back in the car and
went back to town. And she slapped at me, and just wouldn't come the end
of bawling. And I can't stand for a woman to bawl. I went to town and
waited two hours. Then I come back and I had on a cap just like this,
and I opened the door and throwed the cap in. It landed right in
Margaret's lap. I didn't know it. I was just acting crazy. And I waited
two or three minutes, and I opened the door and peeked in, and there she
was still sitting there
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
Were you working at Bassett then?
No.
When did you first start working at Bassett?
About ten years ago.
Do you like working there?
They've treated me the nicest of anyplace I've ever been. Good people, good people to work for.
Is your work hard? What kind of work do you do?
I'm a spare hand. Whoever is out, I take their place.
You work with a stapling gun?
Yes.
Is that dangerous sometimes?
I remember you telling me some story about somebody got a staple in them or something. I can't remember it.
I stooped over one day, and a girl shot me.
Yes. In the seat of the pants. She drove three staples in me before I could get out of the way. I mean on the way up. I felt like killing that girl.
I would have grabbed her and hugged her.
No, you wouldn't neither.
That's terrible.
Well, it was, that she was that ignorant. Margaret played a good joke on
her brother a couple or three years ago. A pitiful little old boy,
twenty-one or twenty-two. And he's not as bright as he should be, which,
I think, adds to their situation. And he come over to the car talking
You were telling us some stories about what they did to people down there on their birthdays. They celebrated people's birthdays kind of funny, didn't they?
Cut their britches legs off. And I would sneak in the front door and out the back on my birthday.
I never got mine cut off.
Did they ever try to? They ever get you down?
No. If they'd ever tried it, I would just let them cut them and then been embarrassed. Because you can't fight a crowd.
Did they ever cut James? Did they get lots of people's?
Oh, yes, everybody's, if they found out when their birthdays were. Now I
could see them cutting a girl's britches legs off. The girls would cut
the girls' britches legs off, and the boys would cut the boys' britches
legs off. It got so bad they had to put a stop to it. And I was glad of
that. The next week after they put a stop to it, this old colored
fellow, they never had found out his birthday. He was sixty-two years
old. And everybody in there loved the old man. It was on a Friday. And
they found out Friday was his birthday. And they didn't find it out
until he knowed for sure they wasn't going to cut his britches legs off.
And on that Friday some of the white ladies had took up a collection and
bought that old nigger some awful nice birthday presents, and they made
him one of the prettiest cakes you ever saw. The old nigger died that
night. He was happy; he was good. And he was telling about his
step-daddy left Georgia when he was eight years old. He got caught
selling liquor. It had been fifty-four years, and he had never been back
in Georgia. He wouldn't eat a watermelon that come from Georgia. He
said, "Them's the meanest white people I know of. My step-daddy left
down there, and he had to leave one night after the white folks had gone
to bed." His brother went up and tried to pay off, and the sheriff said
no. He said, "We don't want the money; we want the nigger." And he said,
"In my home town, there was a sign that said, ‘Nigger, if you can't
read, you'd better run."’
That was a fine old nigger if there ever was one. A colored person. Now when I said "nigger," that was just an expression. One day got two out, and they were fighting now. One of them hit the other, and the other say, "You do that again, I'm going to beat all that black off of your head." And that would have been a pretty good job. He wouldn't have his lunch; it would have been a whole day's job.
We've got one colored girl that's worked
Did you ever think about leaving Bassett?
Just very recently.
But that convinced you not to go.
I've turned in notice one time I was quitting. One bossman said no raise. Another one said, "We'll make it thirty-five." Come up to Glenn sucker. And they weren't giving no raises at that time. Glenn said, "What is this? A thirty-five-cent-an-hour raise?" "Roy's quitting Saturday." He said, "Make it even. Give him fifty."
And I got a fifty-cent raise there without asking.
I didn't know that guy till last week. Came over to the house about that parking lot out there, you know, it's in an industrial zone, wasn't it? Wanting to fish and so on. And I talked to him. And I was asking him about the way they had that wreck last year on the corner of 9th and College Avenue. It was a mess and everything. I had just gone down there to talk about the park. And he give me his word, he said, "I don't want you to worry about it."
There was some other guy with him that worked for the state. And he looked at him. He says, "Do you know anything about it?" And he says, "Yes, it's just like he said it was." He says, "Well, that fence'll go." And the Town Council voted to turn him down, but they did anyway. Glenn Hunsucker said: The fence blocks the view a-coming this way up the street, and blocks cars out in front of my office, and they're coming the other way. And it was hard to see up there, you couldn't see if there was anything coming. And he told the fence man, and he moved the whole damn thing out away.
One Sunday night, I was nightwatchman over here, and the wind had tore t
I try to do right by people. And I went in, and all them bossmen in there. I looked around at every one of them and swallowed right hard. Glenn laid the telephone down, and he said, "Roy, what are you doing tonight?" "Nothing." He says, "Good, how about a free supper on me?" And I looked at each one of the bossmen. "What do I have to do to get that free supper?" He says, "Pick and sing." I says, "I don't pick and sing for nobody." Well, about an hour later I said, "Well, I'll see you at six-thirty." He convinced me that I could go up there and do that.
What did you pick and sing for?
The Lions' Club Carnival. I got up there, and he got up and made a
speech. He says, "You people can ask him anything you want to except to
come and work for you." And one guy got up and asked, "Why is it they
tell me that you've never sold one of these instruments? You could make
money." I said, "Well, I work for the best people in the world." Boy,
did Glenn catch it over that. He says, "You told him to say that." And
Glenn says, "No, sir. I didn't know what he was going to say. That's
him. That come off of the cuff."
Did you tell him why you'd been on TV?
This old gentleman did.
That's good, that you can really like who you're working for enough to stay. And do you like the people you're working with, too? Are they real good workers? Or are some of them good, some of them bad?
Most of them are good that I work with.
Tickle Mama to death for her "son" to come over and see her.
After he was married and gone, his mama left a key to the door out on the porch for me and my family.
It's kind of funny that you-all have ended up living in the same town. From the same little town and living in the same town.
He and I would leave here, and we'd drive to White Top, Virginia, every
weekend. That's where his people and women come from.
I might make it up there next weekend. My adopted grandmother lives up
there.
Where's she live?
She lives in Buffalo. Howard Graybeal.
We've got some buffalo dollars …
… at Bassett.
"Soldier's Joy," play that one more time, because I've got to go.
I didn't hear no words to it.
I didn't, either. I was waiting.
Oh.
C'mon, sing.
She acts like she's bashful, but she's not.
Yeah, you do. Now come on.
Okay.
You sing at school, don't you?
Sometimes. Not too often.
You're good.
She's nothing but good.
We'll see you folks later.
Okay.
That one's another courting dulcimer there. Had you seen that one?
No, I hadn't seen that one.
I've got another one over there.
Those are beautiful.
I'm getting a lot of calls for them. That's what you need, down at the school.
I want to make one this summer. I'm making my guitar first. I've already made up my mind. You can't change my mind. I've got to make me a guitar first. I hope Daddy's got the wood to make me one. I'm pretty sure he did, somewhere down in there.
You know, your daddy has got some black walnut boards.
Are they good enough? How wide a piece of wood do you have to do to make a guitar?
Oh, to make a guitar.
Do you have to have a piece wide enough to make the whole back?
No. We can make it in three pieces.
[END OF TAPE 3, SIDE B]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
That should be picked with a banjo.
Was that the way it was originally played?
Yes. Most people played it with a banjo.
Where could you find the words for that? Would you go to the library?
Yes.
I think I'll go get the words for that. I like that.
I had the book up here. Alma was going to type it out, but she never did type it.
I'll type it out for you. I'll have time when I come back next spring. I'm going to type me out some things.
I sent my Smith-Corona typewriter back to the factory a year ago. Maybe
he'll be in next week and bring it back. About three hundred dollars'
worth, isn't it? It was the best, highest-priced Smith-Corona that
Brendle has. It so happened that James' brother-in-law was
troubleshooter for that company, and he was down and I gave him that to
take back.
Can you play it?
Yes, a little bit.
I enjoy hearing
You started.
That's all right. Maybe …
I learned one part from you, and then this one part from this other man.
I learned to pick "Home, Sweet Home" from a guy that didn't know a thing
in the world about a dulcimer.
Yes. Start here?
Yes. Now dwell on this one.
Am I doing all right now?
That's good.
All right.
Yes. I like it.
All right, let's try it one more time.
That's pretty. [Interruption]
You better play it one time more.
[Music and singing]
I'll have to practice that one.
Yes'm. We will.
Yes, it is.
I wouldn't be afraid to get up on the stage with you and pick, in front of a crowd.
I'd be afraid.
No, you wouldn't. You'd be just as cool as you are right now. You're not scared like I am.
I don't know, us combined together. But I reckon you're just great.
I hate to quit that.
But it's late.
Twelve-thirty.
Whew! Gosh, no wonder I'm tired.
Is that the same tune?
That's the tune we're doing now.
[Singing]
"I've got a home in Glory Land that Outshines the Sun."
[Music and singing]
Sing some.
I'd love to, but I'm just tired out.
Mr. Ham, you think you'll ever move back to the mountains?
Yes, I guess I will. I'm looking forward to it.
Have you been wanting to for a long time?
The last two years I've been wanting to pretty bad.
No, never tried to.
He's a hillbilly all the way through.
Michael's got some of that in his blood, too, I do believe.
Not me.
Aww.
When you hear music like this coming down a cut through the mountains
late in the evening, it really sounds beautiful.
Dad, that's the reason I wanted to ask you something. Can I take that first dulcimer?
He (Mike) didn't realize I put it on tape.
[Music and singing]
No, I've never tried it.
This week that has come up several times. I've thought about it, but I can't get it started. The next few days, try that.
[Music and singing]
[Singing]
Is it "Summer's almost gone now, winter's almost…"
"Winter's coming on." [Music and singing]
I'll have to get some more words for that. That's a good song.
[Music and singing]
I heard the tune.
[Music and singing]
I like that one, too.
That's a pretty one.
What's the name of that one?
"Little Darling Gal of Mine."
[END OF TAPE 4, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 4, SIDE B]
Come on back in and sit down, Robert.
He can only sit here half an hour.
[Music and singing]
I heard that one before.
That's in the key of C.
[Singing]
Had you tried to play that before?
No, I know the tune. I know the words. I heard that song somewhere. I
can't remember but little snatches of it. Michael, you can say
something, if you want to.
"Casey Jones"
Oh, Yes. [Music and singing]
Yes, I guess we'd better …
You gonna stay all night.
That'd be all right.
No, I'm going back home and sleep in my bed.
Do you want to do that?
Yes, let's do that, since I'm going to be not this week but next week, coming back. I'll be coming here to do interviewing.
Now what's wrong with Mike. He just sits there grinning and poking and pointing and …
He won't say nothing on account of you…
He won't say nothing 'cause of that tape.
He's got the giggles.
Yes. I've got some at home, too, I guess.
Sixteen. They do that when you turn sixteen.
Sixteen.
Yes.
Well, I'm beginning to wish I was still sixteen. Getting too old.
You're not old.
END OF INTERVIEW